I wanted to share with all existing and prospective users of T-Mobile about my horrible experience.

I brought my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (AT&T Unlocked) from AT&T to T-Mobile on Friday. Once I got the number ported over, I was only able to receive only 1 bar MAX of T-Mobile LTE signal at work or home (30 mins apart). I had contacted the technical support Saturday who verified my apn settings. She forwarded the ticket (1307345) to their engineers for review and said I should hear back from them by Wednesday.

Still no resolution by Tuesday when I called back to verify the status of the ticket. The agent from L1 technical support informed me the ticket had been closed because the engineers had found the towers/services in the area to be working optimally. I had the agent put in another ticket (13104989) and asked that this issue be escalated as I had been without network (besides the occasional roaming on AT&T's network with less than 2g speeds).

Today, Wednesday, I called back to get an agent, Jennifer, who did not understand me (Middle Eastern origins) who then told me she was transferring me to telesales so they could assist me. I asked her what they did and explained to her that I needed a level 2 technical support to assist me and to instead get me a manager so I could explain it to them. She transferred me to telesales who then transferred me to the advanced technical support team.

The agent, Shawn, reviewed my tickets and said there was nothing that he can do as the engineers have closed the "three" (?) tickets I've opened with the same resolution that the network was up. I informed him of the additional troubleshooting that I had done (see below) and to see if they could send a T-Mobile technician to the area to verify as the area I'm in should have fair signal throughout. He then stated he can't and gave me the following options:

Change services from T-Mobile

Buy a new T-Mobile Device (Reason why I said no down below)

Get a coverage device that uses my home Internet (obviously doesn't work at work or the other places I've seen the issue...)

He recommended getting me over to Customer Care for someone who could check if I could do a "test drive" and transferred me over.

Shawn transferred me to an agent from customer care (another middle eastern) who informed me that the test drive was no longer an option and then transferred me to telesales about purchasing a new device which I said I didn't want to have to buy a new device for one that SHOULD work (see notes below). I then asked for the complaint department as I had been on the phone for an hour today with no resolution in site. Once I was transferred, I explained the situation and was going to be transferred with the customer care agent to advanced technical support again to discuss further as to why they couldn't assist when the call was disconnected.

In total, I have spent one and a half hours today and approximately another hour for the other days trying to get the issue resolved. I have seen a tech support that is unwilling to assist in helping a customer stay with T-Mobile and has instead followed a methodology of "if it's up; nothing must be wrong".

The device is a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 from AT&T that was unlocked via the carrier unlock code once I left AT&T. I have verified that the specs listed on the AT&T site for the supported radio bands matches two of the three bands used by T-Mobile. I have even found a way to manually select the band through the phone's menu (*#2263#) and manually changed it to match the bands used by T-Mobile. During both of these tries, I was not able to get over 1 bar with LTE on T-Mobile's network. I then went to a separate area from work and home where the signal on my phone was one or two bars. I then tried swapping the SIM card with that of another T-Mobile Customer who has a T-Mobile branded Alcatel OneTouch. She was experiencing similar issues (2 to 3 bars max; not steady; Internet dropping) with it reestablishing network every few minutes. Once we swapped the sim cards, the issue was the same.

At this point, it has led me to believe that the area I'm in is not supporting the bands as previously noted as I have not been able to establish connection on 2 of the 3 bands T-Mobile uses as well as a T-Mobile device cannot get access. Please note the area in reference should be in fairly good signal.

All replies

Fair generally means "1-2 bars" (the range is fair->good->excellent). Bars are determined by the OS. A Samsung device next to an iPhone next to an LG device may all show a different number of bars even though the strength in dB is identical.

The third band supported by T-Mobile is Band 12, which is "extended range LTE". The map doesn't appear to change when I choose a phone with Band 12, so it may not be rolled out in your area yet. Which means that's about as good as you'll get right now, unfortunately.

So what signal strength were you receiving with your phone when it was connected to the AT&T network? I had a AT&T Note 4 and switched to T-Mobile without a problem as T-Mobile piggybacks on the AT&T network in our area (Vermont with very challenging terrain for any cell phone carrier) There are dead spots for all the carriers on our area due to the terrain. However, I do not receive a signal (one half of one bar) at my house, so in order to use AT&T I needed to have an M-Cell connected to my Internet connection. T-Mobile provided a CellSpot free of charge (AT&T charged $150) and I have 5 bars of service at my home and home office. (small building next door to my house) You should ask a T-Mobile (nicely) for a CellSpot and you will have excellent service at you home. Or, switch back to AT&T if that provider has better coverage in your area. Blaming T-Mobile employees for signal issues is not there problem, it's your service area. Which T-Mobile is upgrading with new equipment this year nationwide. I personally have had nothing but excellent support from T-Mobile and I have to drive from Vermont to Western Mass to a T-Mobile store as there are none in Vermont yet.